Girl missing since 1983 was kidnapped on Vatican archbishop's orders, police told

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/24/internationalcrime.catholicism

The unsolved case of a 15-year-old girl who went missing in Rome 25 years ago has been dramatically reopened.

A woman has told police the girl was kidnapped by a criminal gang on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced former head of the Vatican's bank who was linked to the death of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi.

The disappearance in June 1983 of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, has previously been linked by criminal informants to the Rome-based Banda della Magliana gang. But new details supplied by Sabrina Minardi, former girlfriend to the gang's boss, Enrico De Pedis, now ties in the Holy See official.

Minardi has claimed De Pedis snatched the girl on the orders of Marcinkus "to send a message to someone above them" as part of a "power game", La Repubblica newspaper reported yesterday, quoting her testimony.

After being held then killed, Orlandi's body was put in a sack and hidden in a cement mixer on the outskirts of Rome, Minardi said.

American-born Marcinkus died in 2006 aged 84, taking to the grave the truth about his suspected links to the collapse of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano in 1982 and his association with Michele Sindona, a convicted fraudster linked to the mafia who died in prison in Italy in 1986 after drinking coffee laced with cyanide

[Ian David]

1. Pope John Paul II had been hiding hundreds of Jewish babies from their own familes for decades.

An injustice that Pope Ratso has continued.

[hedgehog]

3. What? How exactly did John Paul II get hold of hundreds of

Jewish babies without anyone noticing? I believe you've gotten a garbled version of this story:

Pius was responsible for the case of Edgardo Mortara, who at the age of six was abducted from his family in Bologna and taken to the Vatican by Papal police after it was reported that the Jewish child has been secretly baptized. Many European heads of state protested the 1858 kidnapping, as did Jewish leadership. As a result, Pius blamed Rome’s Jews for what he believed was a widespread Protestant conspiracy to defeat the papacy and levied medieval restrictions on the community.

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/VaticanJewish_96/3630_96.htm


I'm not a fan of John Paul II, but let's try to keep it real!

[Ian David]

6. JP and Ratso both refused to release records of Jewish babies "rescued" during The Holocaust...

... to family members trying to find them, if those children had later been baptized as catholic.

[hedgehog]

10. I found references to Pius XII pulling that stunt, and that John XXIII

who was serving in Paris at the time just ignored him. I also found a story of John Paul II refusing to baptize a Jewish child after the war, insisting that his surviving family be found and he be returned to to them.


What you say is possible. Too many in the Vatican aren't very good Catholics!

[Wizard777]

20. Pius XII is known to have played both sides of the line durring the war.

He did gain from Mousolini Vatican City's Independence from Italy. Making the Vatican a Sovereign State. But O' the deals with devil he made.

[Hekate]

18. My late FIL, a Jew his entire life, took Jewish children to Catholic convents during the Holocaust

I don't know about the Pope in Rome, but Abram had great respect for the nuns of Belgium. They took in Jewish children and kept them safe from the Nazis by providing them with baptismal papers (and probably new names as well) and passing them off as Christian orphans. My FIL helped to bring them extra food rations as he moved about for the Belgian Underground.

One of my husband's cousins who was sheltered by nuns became a Catholic permanently and later married a Catholic woman, but his life was saved. One of my husband's cousins who was not, ended up in a labor camp which he fortunately survived. Nearly everyone else in the extended family died, from the smallest child to the oldest adult.

When you are disrespecting the Catholic Church, the Pope, and so on, keep to historical facts. There is plenty there, as I know. Even in Santa Barbara we have been touched by the clergy sex-abuse scandal, and that's only in recent history.

But know this -- sometimes the Church and its members have done great good. Hiding Jewish children was one of those times.

Hekate

[Ian David]

25. Agreed. But they also have refused to help their Jewish families reuinite with them.

There is a cost to their generosity, and their cost is that they get to do some poaching.

[elehhhhna]

26. God bless your FIL.

[Hekate]

27. He was a tough old man who lived to be 99 (or 97, no one's sure). May his name be remembered...

...for a blessing.

Hekate

[hlthe2b]

2. Well, I'm guessing this Archbishop can now offer first hand accounts

of HELL....


Damn....

[hedgehog]

Some day this entire story will be made into a movie that will make

the DaVinci Code look trivial. The real story even involves a Masonic Lodge!

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. There was so much to the Banker's death that reeked of a good

Dan Brown novel. The history and secrecy behind that affair
gives a reason for the Vatican to be worried if the truth gets out.

[hedgehog]

5. Isn't there also speculation that the death of John Paul I was

engineered by people afraid he was going to expose the entire affair?

[seemslikeadream]

7. yes I read that

[malaise]

12. I have always been concerned about the sudden death

of the pope before John-Paul.

[Ichingcarpenter]

8. That is just a disinformation spin to discredit the real story

and make it look like a delusional conspiracy story.

[hedgehog]

9. So what's the real story?

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. this link will start you on your journey

http://www.americanatheist.org/pope99/calvi.html

[hedgehog]

13. That's pretty much the story I've heard. Your link actually confirms my suggestion

"As an aside, let me point out that John Paul I, the 30-day pope who died under what some say was highly questionable circumstances, intended to rein-in Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank,"


although we will probably never know if the death was a lucky accident for the conspirators or if it was murder.


I am firmly convinced that the Church is going to cast off the hierarchy as it exists today within my lifetime. There will be some kind of structure; every organization has some type of bureaucracy, but the days of political power and intrigue must end.

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. The “Opus Dei” and Ratzinger have a real connection to the bank and power

Strange is how georgie and blair are talking about or have converted to Catholicism


http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/263.html

[defendandprotect]

19. Pope John XXIII got rid of Opus Dei . . . and John Paul restored them to power --!!!

It looks like they might also have ended Pope John XXIII's reign --
immediately thereafter Vatican II came under heavy attack by the right-wing in
control in the Vatican and it's still going on! Every attempt has been made to
overturn and deny it.

I had heard about Blair and his plans to become Catholic . . .

but not about Georgie --- ??!!!


AND, John Paul who succeeds Pope John XXIII looks like the first CIA Pope . . . ???

[seemslikeadream]

22. Thanks Ichingcarpenter

:hi:

[defendandprotect]

17. And did the Vatican buy their way into "faith-based" contributions from US taxpayer?

The website was a bit much for me to absorb --
however, I thought this highly interesting . . .

In 1968, Sindona comes up with new plans on how to shelter Vatican money in offshore investments; this comes because throughout Italy, there is again growing scrutiny and concern about the Holy Sees investments, it’s learned that the Vatican has money in weapons manufacturing, even a Pharmaceutical firm that produces birth control pills, and in that year, there is another call for the Italian government to remove the special tax exemption for the church. Sindona begins working very closely with an American bishop (who would later become an Archbishop) named Paul Marcinkus

I think there are other conclusions about the death of Pope John -- the 33 day Pope --
and that would be that he was about to overturn the cart on birth control.

Pope John XXIII with Vatican II had pretty much done that by telling Catholics . . . "to use their
own free thought and personal conscience to decide for themselves whether or not to use birth control."
Not only that, but this also kicked Papal "infallibility" in the ass.

Certainly approving birth control would reverse the church's fortunes by limiting its future members.
It would also weaken its control over members' private lives.

Additionally, there had just been a study of birth control by a church panel completed for the Pope which concluded that birth control would be a wise decision for church and members.
Catholics were expecting birth control to be approved.

Meanwhile. . .
I didn't know that it was Musolini who helped the Vatican out so handily with tax exempt status --
it's a major issue for the Vatican and one that still concerns them ---

I'm wondering if when the Vatican was buying things they didn't perhaps buy an interest in the
GOP which got them their faith-based allotments from our US Treasury compliments of the US
taxpayer --- ???

[defendandprotect]

16. Did Dan Brown ever do anything on the BANK business . . .???

I thought ... Godfather II? ... was suggesting something about it but not clear to me ---

[lovuian]

15. the Vatican has connections with the Mafia this confirms it

they are a big haven for tax free money laundering service

[Wizard777]

21. That's always been known. The big Bosses are always in church when someone gets whacked.

[TheWraith]

23. This sounds suspiciously like nonsense to me.

All they have to go on is this woman's claim? Unless someone can come up with a realistic reason why a Vatican official, even a corrupt one, would want to kidnap a random 15 year old girl, I'd treat this as unconfirmed rumor. Apparently even the girl's family doesn't really buy it.

[Drum]

24. I smell a new opera in the making.... nt